Dungeon Encounters

Genre: Top-Down Dungeon Crawler / Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Dungeon Encounters is a Top-Down Dungeon Crawler and Turn-Based JRPG released on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game takes a somewhat minimal approach to the genre, although in some ways this game is more complex and involved than most games of its type, harkening back to the days when you needed to play videogames with a pen and pad of paper handy to take notes (or in this case, perhaps a pad of graph paper).

When I say this game is “minimal”, one of the greatest examples of this is the presentation. You will spend most of the game moving a 3D character along a featureless 2D grid, with points of interest represented by numbers – white numbers representing largely helpful points of interest, and black numbers representing enemies. Aside from small character portraits in menus and battle, and an occasional splash screen with location art, this is it.

Backing these visuals, the sound is similarly lacking – in most dungeon areas you get no music, only environmental sounds. This is just as well, what little music is in the game is unimpressive or jarringly out-of-place, like the electric guitar-heavy battle theme.

To say this game is visually dull is an understatement – the lack of visual flair in the game actually makes gameplay more tedious, as it is difficult to remember where everything is in the labyrinthine maze of the game’s dungeons… unless of course you took my recommendation in the first paragraph to heart and brought a pen and pad of graph paper to chart everything. If so, you may also want to make note of important numbers. Some will soon be second nature – a white 01 is stairs leading down, while a white 02 is stairs leading up, and a white 05 and 06 will let you heal and resurrect party members. But other numbers may prove to be a vital cure to an ailment a party member has, or a helpful way to traverse the dungeon. To some extent what each of these coded numbers means is listed in sub-menus, but you have to go searching for it.

At least at first, exploring the dungeons ends up being one of the bright points of this game’s minimal approach, despite the woefully lacking visuals. The streamlined approach to the game means that once you have a feel for how things work, you can set up the gameplay options to allow your character to speed their way through corridors, meticulously filling out the map to gain bonuses and swiftly fighting through battles. Battles are relatively simple, yet approach the genre from a creative direction I hadn’t seen before, where characters all have physical and magical defense points that are restored after battle, and only take more permanent damage to their HP once those points are whittled down.

Overall, there’s a very good feel to the grinding in this game, and once you start to get some good abilities and equipment, you’ll feel like a powerhouse… until you hit a snag. For me, this snag occurred when one of my party members was hit by a successful petrify attack from an enemy that was otherwise not a significant threat to my party. Petrify does not work in this game like it does in most JRPGs – there is no easily-accessible curative item or spell to heal this malady, and you can’t even drag the ailing party member with you – they are permanently fixed to that spot until you can locate one of those special space numbers that can heal a petrify, and when you do, you’d better hope that you remember the location of the party member you left behind. In the meantime, if you want a full party, you need to walk all the way back to the starting point to recruit another character… and then grind some more to level them up to where the rest of your party is.

Before long, it becomes clear how much of this game really depends on you remembering where everything is. That square you couldn’t access a few floors back, what were its X, Y, and Z coordinates, and was there a spot you could traverse on the same X and Y coordinates on a floor above or below? Which way do you go to get to the closest healing shrine? Oh, and if you need to visit the shop on the first floor but you’re on the eighth sub-basement… well, get ready to trek all the way back through all eight mazelike floors to get back up.

Oh, and those expecting any Nintendo Switch-specific features, perhaps even a touchscreen interface for note-taking or charting out maps like the Etrian Odyssey games had on the Nintendo DS and 3DS? Yeah, there’s nothing like that here, sorry.

In the end, while I respect the simplified approach to Top-Down Dungeon Crawlers and Turn-Based JRPGs that Dungeon Encounters takes, this same simplified approach can become easily exasperating as playing the game well either requires having a photographic memory, or more likely a detailed account of notes, locations, and maps charting the game as you play it. I suppose if that sounds like your sorta’ thing, this game has a lot to offer you, as it can be a lot of fun progressing through the game’s dull-looking dungeons. But I think most players will find the need to maintain a journal to properly progress through this game to be too tedious to be worthwhile for a videogame in 2021.

tl;dr – Dungeon Encounters is a Top-Down Dungeon Crawler and Turn-Based JRPG that takes a very simple approach to the genre that’s both refreshing, but also ultimately the game’s worst flaw. Featuring a dull and largely featureless presentation, Dungeon Encounters is streamlined in a way that makes dungeon exploration and grinding through enemies a lot of fun… until the game’s more demanding elements come to the forefront, demanding that players chart out the dungeons to remember where everything is. Due to this and a few other elements, a fun and simple game becomes an extremely tedious one, and only a very niche target audience will appreciate its charms through its frustrations.

Grade: C

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